WHY DID THE LORD ALLOW MEN TO HAVE
CONCUBINES AND/OR MORE THAN ONE WIFE?

It
is Obvious From the Old Testament that Some Men Had Several Wives
and Sometimes Several Concubines as Well. Why?

Was a Man With Several Concubines
Considered an Adulterer?

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First of all let us
consider concubinage.

We may start off by
considering some comments from the Baker Encyclopedia of the
Bible:

'Concubinage was practised
in many ancient cultures, especially in Mesopotamia.....where a
private citizen might have one or two concubines in addition to
his primary wife.....a concubine was often a slave or part of the
booty of war (Judges 5:30). A man might have a concubine simply
as an economical form of marriage, since no dowry or bride-price
was required. A concubine could add to a man's prestige by giving
him two wives and thus an increased capacity for children. Such
offspring were normally delivered onto the knees of the legal
wife, thus establishing their legitimacy as family members. The
concubine was also another servant to add to his work force.'
(Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible, 1997, Vol 1,
p504).

So there we have it
in a nutshell: a concubine was essentially a servant girl whose
duties included sexual services to her master. She was seen as
more 'low-born' than the wife although she was still allowed
certain rights within the household. It might seem odd to women
of our own day why the wives did not object to this arrangement,
but in fact all the evidence is that concubines were warmly
welcomed by wives into the household since they mainly became the
servants of the wife. The ancient world simply did not carry the
modern post-Christian expectation that a man would have only one
sexual partner, neither did wives expect it of their husbands. Of
course sometimes men had two or more wives (rather than
concubines). Wives had greater rights but cost their husbands a
lot more!

This might all seem
strange today, but we sometimes don't realize how much of the
'one man-one woman' scenario developed from Christianity
which was later reinforced by the 19th century
Romantic movement (just think of the novels of the Bronte
sisters with their passionate concern for private 'one man-one
woman' love). Indeed, we still see the acceptance
of plural marriage in cultures which have not been influenced by
these things – including in parts of the Islamic
world.

If we look at the
period of the patriarchs, we immediately must note that
concubinage etc is the expected 'norm' – note Scriptures
such as Genesis 22:24; 35:22; 36:12, also note how concubinage
was welcomed by wives who were barren: Genesis 16:1-3; 25:5-6; 1
Chronicles 1:32. If a concubine provided children for a barren
wife, those children could gain an inheritance and real prestige
(but they would legally be considered the wife's children –
not the concubine's).

Some Bible
commentators have suggested that the Lord allowed men to have
more than one wife or several concubines during the period from
the Great Flood until the Old Covenant in order to build up the
world's population (which had obviously been decimated by the
Flood), but from the time of Moses receiving the legal package on
Mount Sinai, concubinage was banned. But this is totally
incorrect for two reasons:

Firstly, we should
not forget that the Old Covenant was given to Israel
alone!

Secondly, the Old
Covenant did make provision for a man having more than one
wife. Please note Deuteronomy 21:15-17 !!

We must also note
that Moses himself took a second wife who was an Ethiopian
woman (Numbers 12:1). Moses had already married Zipporah (Exodus
2:21). Aaron and Miriam criticized their brother for taking this
second wife, but they were immediately punished by the Lord for
their criticism, making it plain that Moses had done no wrong in
His sight (Numbers 12:1-15). Of course, it is possible that
Moses' first wife had died, but the text gives no indication of
this.

Later on people
like David continued to have wives and concubines without
receiving a single reproach from the Lord! David only received
punishment when he added another man's wife (Bathsheba) to this
group thereby clearly committing adultery.

Often Bible
teachers in Sunday School are embarrassed about people like
Abraham, Gideon and David having several wives and concubines
– they simply don't know how to handle it! They usually
react by calling David an adulterer who still had lessons to
learn - but this is just not what the Bible teaches. The fact is:
prior to the Christian New Covenant, God did allow
this practise and it was not adultery! Adultery is taking
another man's wife (or another woman's husband), but if a man
had two wives and two concubines he was expected to be faithful
to them all – it is clear from the Scriptures that this was
not considered adultery, unpalatable though this may be
for some!

Not a Christian
Approach

The practise of a
man having more than one wife or concubines continued into the
Roman society of Jesus' day but although no single statement of
Jesus or Paul completely barred this approach for Christians it
starts to become clear that the practise is hardly consistent
with the Christian life. A consideration of Jesus' comments in
Matthew 5-7, Matthew 19:1-9 and perhaps especially Paul's
comments on marital love in 1 Corinthians 7 tell us much more.
Paul assumes either no marriage or monogamous marriage
within the Christian life, although it is true that he never
specifically refers to plural marriage or concubinage at all.
Others have expressed surprise that in Acts 15 when the disciples
made a decision – guided by the Holy Spirit – as to
what new gentile Christian converts most urgently needed to be
warned about as being inconsistent with the Christian life,
neither plural marriage nor concubinage are mentioned, although
'sexual immorality' certainly is mentioned (Check out Acts
15:27-29).

There are strong
indications that during the first century AD some new Christians
brought their plural marriages into the Church (in 1 Timothy 3:2
the comment is made that a man to be ordained an Elder should
only have 'one wife' – I am unconvinced at the
efforts of some to say that this just referred to divorce and
remarriage which would have been extremely rare in that
world), but the practise appears to disappear within a hundred or
so years as it was increasingly seen as being incompatible with
the Christian life and it is Christianity – more than
anything else – which largely caused plural marriage and
concubinage to virtually disappear from Europe.

So why did God ever
allow such things?

I think that here
we have to remind ourselves that we cannot question the choices
or decisions of God!! In the very early years after Creation, for
instance, men would necessarily have had to marry their close
female relations, but later on this became barred with strict
laws against incest. Are we going to question God over this? What
right would we have to question the wisdom of our Creator? Then,
for a long period of time, plural marriages, concubinage and very
large families were allowed (and the latter certainly
encouraged), and there is ample reason to think that the need to
re-build the world's population, post-flood, may well have been a
reason for this. But where these things were taken to
excess, the Lord issued warnings. See Genesis 6:1-2 for
instance.

But regarding the
Christian life, the New Testament issues repeated warnings about
the need to avoid sexual immorality and about the need for
Christians to manifest good upright moral behaviour and today it
would therefore be entirely wrong for a Christian man to be
involved in a plural marriage: Matthew 15:19-20; Acts 15:29; 1
Corinthians 5:9-11; 6:9-11,13,18-20; 2 Corinthians 12:21;
Galatians 5:19; Ephesians 5:3-7; Colossians 3:5-6; 1
Thessalonians 4:3-8; Jude 7; Revelation 2:14,20-21;
9:21.

Robin A. Brace,
2005.

A Follow-up Question on
this article sent to me by e mail:

“I
understand and agree with what you wrote re: polygamy in the
Bible.

One question though concerning Christians.
Wouldn't Jesus' statement in Mat 19:5 seem to indicate that He
teaches monogamy?”

My Reply:

I take your point that Matthew 19:5
could be used as a plea for monogamy. But what I find is that
when the Bible talks about a husband and wife
becoming 'one
flesh' that
is notnecessarily talking about monogamy - my gut feeling is that
this simply refers to the ideal state of love and union between a
man and his wife (or wives) - it is not
speaking numerically, if
you get my meaning, but ratheremotionally.
This is my honest opinion. It is we Christians who read the
monogamy into it.However, please don't misunderstand I am
certainly not making a plea for multiple wives among
Christians! It
is simply that I want to be frank about certain Scriptures which
I think we Christians have tended to cover up or gloss over. But
today it would certainly be wrong for Christians to
encourage multiple partners.